user activation in the service is the most important stage in the life of the product, where there are also: viewing and/or generation of content, formation of habits or purchases.

the easier and more convenient it is for the user to register or authorise, the faster he will be able to perform the target action, go to the next steps and, most likely, recommend the service to his circle of contacts.

if there were no problems with authorisation in the service, registration left much to be desired. two logical branches and more than a dozen screens generated refusals of users to complete the path and greatly reduced the already low activity.

while the conversion rate at the beginning of registration was 3.5%, at the end it was already 0.98%. refusals were 1.56%. conversion to authorisation was 4.5% with refusals of 0.24.

in order to increase conversion rates and lower rejection rates, we needed to change scenarios and experiment with simplified authentication methods.

looking at the feedback from users and opportunities to improve activation, we have concluded that we need to:

• redesign the registration script;
• revise registration and authorisation methods;
• add notifications about linking or updating of personal data

from the very first launch of the service, users registered via email and password. this system did not suit the customers, who wanted to contact performers by phone or text message.

at the same time, the performers were in no hurry to link their number to the service, as they saw no value in such a procedure, and additional linking popups, which were shown once after login, were skipped and forgotten.

so that a new audience would not encounter similar problems later on, we decided to get rid of email and social networks, and add a phone number to the registration.

we had ideas to popularise this method, but it was not necessary because of the messengers, which have already increased confidence in this method of authentication.

back to the registration scenario, we moved the profile filling for activation. such actions were only possible due to the unification of the customer and contractor personal accounts, which were clumsy monsters with a huge amount of those debt.

so registration lost the fields for selecting an activity, choosing a profession, uploading a portfolio, confirming a phone number, and entering parent information (for people under 18 years old).

we have not forgotten about the authorisation and combined it with the login by mail and number in one field to reduce the number of actions and components on the screen, in addition, we left the option to log in through social networks for users who do not have linked mail or phone number.

to bridge the gap between people who have an identity link and people who don't, we've added security popups based on restoring account access in case of problems with the primary login method.

in order not to bother users too much, these popups appear only after a successful completion of a task (for example, a response to a casting) once every 3 days.

at the end of several months of testing, we noticed a significant increase in the conversion rate of the beginning of registration by 2.5 times to 9.2% and completion of registration by 3.5 times to 3.6%. failures, in turn, decreased by almost 4 times to 0.4%.

in addition, changes have affected the authorisation, failures which decreased by 5.5 times to 0.04%, and the conversion has increased by 2.5 times to 11.9%.

while we continue to collect feedback to test the new hypothesis, we already have plans to do away with post-registration and create a single point of authentication by phone number.